It is a common practice for travelers who are away from home to purchase items for themselves and for others while they move from place to place. Several inconveniences arise that make it difficult, and sometime even impossible, to purchase desired items in such situations.
Often the merchant simply has no convenient mechanism to wrap and/or have the item picked up for shipping to a location foreign to the merchant. This comes about for a variety of reasons. For example, the small (or sometimes large) size of the purchase makes it impractical for the merchant to arrange for shipping. Sometimes language difficulties prevent adequate communication thereby impeding shipment of the prospective purchase. Sometimes the inability of the merchant to know the shipping and/or packaging costs prevents the transaction from occurring. Often the shipping costs for a particular item far outweigh the value of the item.
Other factors may also interfere with the ability of having purchased goods shipped to a purchaser's destination of choice. One such factor is that the purchaser will be away from home for an extended period and thus no one is available to receive the purchase. This often happens at the beginning of a trip or vacation and thus the purchaser must forego buying the item(s) or must carry the purchases for the remainder of the trip. This is inconvenient at best. Also, sometimes it is desired to send the purchase to an address different from the home address and this can cause problems because the delivery address does not match the credit card address.
Further problems result when import and/or customs duties need to be paid, or when import clearances must be obtained. In such situations, unless the purchaser is sophisticated, the inconvenience of arranging for these governmentally imposed requirements often outweigh the desirability of the purchase.